Weekly Geeks #23 – Challenge Update

This week for Weekly Geeks, we’re given the option of choosing a past topic and repeating it this week.  Awhile ago, we did a “challenge update” and since I wanted to do another one, this gave me the perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone.

Since, we’re two months from the end of the year, I thought I would let everyone know how I was doing on my challenges.  I have a feeling I’m not going to get through all of them, but I should come pretty close.

Completed Challenges:

Numbers Challenge – For this one, I had to read five different books that had a number somewhere in them. This challenge ended on August 1st, so I completed this one awhile ago.. If you want to see what books I did, check out my wrap-up post.

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril III Challenge – This one has actually just finished, ending on Halloween and I think I did pretty well.  The idea of the challenge was to read anywhere from 2 – 4 novels (depending on which level of participation you chose) from any of these genres – Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, Supernatural – between Sept. 1st and Oct. 31st.  I actually did really well with it and read 6 novels.  Of course, I didn’t stick to my original list that I was going to read, but these intrigued me at the time and I’ll be getting to the rest soon enough.  The books I did read were: the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost, Dark Harvest by Lynda HIlburn, The 12th Demon by Bruce Hennigan, Mona Lisa Awakening by Sunny, Mona Lisa Blossoming by Sunny.

50 New Authors – This is a challenge that I twisted a little. The true purpose was to read 50 books in 2008, but since it was really easy for me – I reached the 50th book marker in April and the 100th in August – I made it a little more difficult by making it 50 new authors instead.  As of Oct. 27th, I had read my 50th author, which was Marilee Brothers debut novel Moonstone. So this is another challenge that I have completed.   Out of the 118 novels I’ve currently read, 43% were new authors.  If you’re curious to see which new authors I tried, you’ll have to check out my list; however, a few of the new authors were – Jocelynn Drake, Stephenie Meyer, Marta Acosta, Ann Aguirre, Anne Bishop, Jenna Black, Maria Snyder, Melissa Marr, and Robin McKinley.

Ongoing Challenges:

Herding Cats – For this challenge, we had to create a list of our 10 favorite books and then pick 3 books from other people’s recommendation and read them. We have until November 30th and I have only read one of my three novels.  Here are the books I said I was going to read: Twilight by S. Meyer, Eragon by C. Paolini, and the Lightening Thief by R. Riordan.  I’m getting the feeling I might not finish this one since there’s only a month left.  I actually have Eragon sitting on my desk, so I may try and get to it this month, but it depends on what books need to be reviewed.  I also have Eldest, the second Paolini book, so I may do both of them instead of reading the Riordan novel.

1st in a Series – This challenge actually works really well with the 50 New Books challenges since a lot of the authors I’m trying have series. The idea is to read 12 novels that start a series. Out of the 12, I’ve read 9 and I have the first book in a new series waiting for me on my desk.  There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to get this one done, I just have to go find the novels.  The last three series I’m planning on reading are: the Gardella Vampires by Colleen Gleason, Glory St. Clair by Gerry Bartlett, and Broken Heart, OK by Michele Bardsley.

AZ Challenge – The idea is to read a book for each letter of the alphabet, using both the title and author, for a total of 52 books. Thankfully, there wasn’t any restrictions on the novels not being a part of another challenge, so I was able to use a lot of the books from the other five challenges for this one. I’m still missing a few letters, but out of the 52, I’ve read 37 books.  I’m not sure I’ll complete this one, but I should come awfully close. I’m still having problems finding an author with a last name that starts with either U or X as well as a title for X.  If anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear them.

Recap:

So those are the six challenges I’m participating in this year.  I’m not sure if I’ll do quite that many next year, but I’ll still probably do a few.  My own take on these reading challenges is to give me some choices on what to read.  There are a lot of times where I want to read something, but I just don’t know what.  That’s when I drag out my challenge list and pick something from there.  It’s worked for me earlier this year, but since I’ve been getting more books for review from authors and publicists, I haven’t been as attentive to it.  I’ll definitely be continuing the 50 New Author challenge, if not just for myself.  I really enjoyed finding all of these new authors and I still have a huge list of more to check out.

If you want to see my entire list of books for all of my challenges, here’s my list. I had some of them posted on the sidebar, but adding all of them would have made it a little too big so now it’s a PDF.

The new year is just around the corner, so if you’re looking for a few challenges to join, then I would wander over to A Novel Challenge and see what they have listed over there.